


Gentlemen Travelers Never Die

by FlyingPigPoet



Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [1]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV), The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, M/M, isn't history fun?, italics in Anne Lister's sections are from the coded parts of her journals on the Russian trip, these fandoms were destined, this is gonna get gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25814722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Summary: The Old Guard meets Gentleman Jack.Anne Lister, historical 19th-century British lesbian diarist and traveler, died at the age of 49 at the edge of the Black Sea, a few hundred miles from what in her time was the Ukraine, and what, 6000 years before her time, had been Scythia. No one in the Old Guard thought this was a coincidence.This is a fairy tale of blood, blades, bullets and journal pages. It is the story of two women and three men who can’t die. Mostly. Their names are Andy, Nicky, Joe, Sebastien and Anne. For a long time, there was just Andy. Then the others came along. Anne is new. And she has no idea how far her travels are about to take her.I will be posting this on Sunday and Wednesday nights.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854), Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872979
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66





	1. Ch. 1: A Fairy Tale. Ish.

Scythia. An ancient land, with rolling green hills, thatched cottages, the rugged Carpathian Mountains. Brown bears, wild boars and lynxes wandered freely. Humans fought the animals, other humans, the terrain. In the twenty-first century, they would call that land the Ukraine, build skyscrapers and wire it for technology. But Andromache the Scythian, the Eternal Warrior, would always remember it as being so, so green.

As a girl, she had loved hunting more than her older sisters had, had thrilled to the war cries of the warriors as they set off to fight off the incursions of other tribes on the pastureland they had taken for the season. She had killed her first deer at eight, her first enemy at ten. When she killed two Thracians at fourteen, the women said she was ready to be married, but she told them she would rather fight than wed. When she was thirty-seven, she had taken an enemy arrow to the eye, which had been briefly excrutiating and, surprisingly, temporary.

After that, she led the tribe for centuries, worshipped as a god and followed into battle without question. Her tribe beat other tribes and she hammered them on the anvil of her will to create an empire that beat back the Thracians, the Greeks, and the Cimmerians.

But as the centuries passed and Andromache lived and fought and died and lived again, she knew that there was a reason she had vowed to never marry.

Yes, she had fucked. Of course she had. Many of her warriors were strong and attractive, young and virile. But it never meant anything. She had seen a few pairings among her people each decade or so who seemed happy together, but the fight for survival meant the sort of poetic nonsense common to the chatter of young girls was only a fantasy they built out of their anxiety and their hope.

Long after her parents and sisters had been lost to the ravages of time, Andromache began to long for something else, she knew not what. Scythia was, at its broadest, maybe only 150 leagues east to west, but she had met merchants and other travelers from the Silk Road, and she knew that the world beyond her home was vast. After one or two thousand years, give or take a few decades, she felt a pull away from her people, a yearning to see the rest of the world, to meet other kinds of people, speak other languages, fight more interesting foes.

One night, on the longest night of the year, she packed her tent and her most precious possessions—which were fewer and fewer each century: a few old pieces of jewelry, her labrys, the small cloth deer her eldest sister had sewn for her to sleep with after that first kill, the boar belt buckle her father had given her after she died the first time—and abandoned her people.

In two thousand years (give or take a few decades), her people had not seemed to her to have changed or grown. Surely, somewhere out there in the vast world were people who had more need of her, who had more—or anything--to give her. She would find them.

Surely.

///

Mulan sat in her tent, scrutinizing the map her servants had put together for her from the surveyors in her army. Her regiment had been patrolling a hundred miles west of the wall for the previous year, pushing back against the Mongols, the Manchurians, the Quiang and the Tai. And she was tired, bone-weary, and only wanted to return to her parents.

But the small dragon who accompanied her everywhere sat on the table telling her jokes and attempting to appease her malaise and lift her spirits.

“Do not give up, my general. We are here for a purpose. The Emperor requires our obedience and protection.”

“Ah, Little Dragon, don’t you ever tire of obeying? Always obeying, never simply… taking your pleasure? A nap? A bottle of plum wine?”

“Ever so, my general. But Confucius tells us—”

Mulan roared and pushed all the maps and quills and ink off the camp table. “I am DONE with Confucius! FUCK Confucius up the a—”

The little dragon fluttered to the top of the tent where she couldn’t reach him. “If I might, um, make so bold, my auspicious general of everlasting victory, you might be spending a little too much time with our rough and tumble soldiers—”

Mulan took in a breath to remonstrate, but she heard the guard outside her tent respond to some voices, so she snapped her fingers and the little dragon returned to his place as her belt buckle.

A guard poked his head in, looking fearful. “General! We caught a lurker on the edge of camp who… insisted on an audience. The name he gave is Andromache the Scythian…”

Mulan patted her belt buckle to retrieve her serenity. “Escort him in. No weapons.” 

The… person… that they escorted in was no him. Mulan would know. She gestured to a camp stool on the other side of the table, and sat down herself on her side.

“Scythian. You are far from home.”

“As are you, General.”

“Why are you here? Are you a spy?”

“Spies don’t walk up to the armies they are observing and announce themselves.”

“Not generally, no.” Mulan allowed herself the smallest of smiles. She liked this woman.

“I am a mercenary. I traveled in Mongolia on my way here from my home. There are things about their army you would benefit from knowing about.” She gestured to her ragged clothes. “And I would benefit from a little money to improve my situation. I can always hunt for meals, but traveling naked isn’t a good idea…”

Mulan went for the kill. “Especially for a woman.”

Andromache scrutinized her, taking her time. Then: “You would know.”

Mulan saw the truth of the woman’s knowledge in her eyes, so she didn’t bother to deny it as the woman undoubtedly expected her to. “I understand why you might have left home. But why choose fighting as your road in life?”

“I was never given a choice. Where I am from, four in five men fight. One in five women fight. I was… very good at it. But my people were… small. And I feel…” 

She looked at a loss for words, so Mulan said quietly, “Not small.”

A half-smile. “No.”

“Tell me, Andromache the Scythian. Why should I believe you and what proof do you offer that you are friend and not foe?”

The woman looked wearier than Mulan had ever seen even a great-grandmother. She said, “I have no proof. If you want to kill me, do it. I would welcome the rest.”

Mulan said, “Give me the information you have. If it checks out, we will allow you to join us for a probationary period. If not, you will get the death you deserve.”

The woman gave another small laugh. “Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

And that made no sense at all.

///

Quynh was sharpening her knives in her tent when the general’s aide summoned her. She gathered her bow and quiver of arrows and strode to Mulan’s tent, bowing deeply when she was allowed to enter. “My general? How may I be of service?”

Mulan sighed, rubbing her thumb over the head of the bronze dragon that served as her belt buckle. Quynh had some thoughts about that dragon, but they made her doubt her sanity, so she never examined them too closely.

Mulan said, “A Scythian came to me today offering information about the Mongols. I need you to go and see if there is any truth to these claims. You are the only one I trust to handle this.”

Quynh frowned. “Why are you even trusting him this much? Surely he is a spy or a servant of our enemies.”

“If he were… well, it’s just. I need you to see for yourself and advise me accordingly.”

Quynh took in her general’s exhaustion. “As you wish, General. Of course, I obey.”

Mulan gave her a small grateful smile and dismissed her.

///

Andromache liked the Han woman immediately, liked her serious demeanor and the occasional sudden smile. Together they rode toward the nearest Mongol encampment, but turned aside a few miles away and rode up the side of a small mountain, to a flattened pace near a narrow stream. There they watered their horses, tethered them to a tree, and Andromache led the way around to the north side of the mountain that overlooked the Mongol encampment. Quynh could easily count the tents and gasped. 

“They are so few!” She stared at Andromache. “Is this a trick? Do you mean to trick us into attacking them?”

Andromache shook her head. “Quite the opposite. I spent ten days watching them. One brigade left three days ago, towards the Huaisha River. Three days before that another brigade went off in the opposite direction. I think your general is about to be flanked from both sides.”

Quynh swore. “We need to get back. How fast can you ride?”

Andromache grinned.

///

Andromache fought for Mulan for ten years, only dying twice. She hadn’t intended on staying, but there was something about Quynh. When she was around the woman, she felt… things. After that first battle, when Mulan decidedly trounced the Mongols based on the Scythian’s information, the general had given Andromache a scroll of Han poetry.  
Quynh helped her learn to read it.

I want to be your love for ever and ever,  
Without break or decay.  
When the hills are all flat,  
The rivers are all dry.  
When it thunders in winter,  
When it snows in summer  
When heaven and earth mingle,  
Not till then will I part from you.

Andromache looked up into Quynh’s eyes like a starless night and was lost. Or maybe found. She had found what she had been looking for, and she knew in her gut that she was going to lose it, because Quynh would die. And she knew she should care, she should protect herself, she should go now and not turn back, but she couldn’t.

After that, they were inseparable in combat, fighting back to back. Many times, Andromache threw herself between Quynh and their enemies, and took more than one arrow in the process. Each time, Quynh berated her for it, and they had screaming fights after the battles when the rest of the army was off partying and whoring.

And then came the battle when Andromache threw herself in front of a spear and died in front of Quynh. And Quynh screamed and threw herself into the fight with the Mongols and got sliced to bits.

Mulan’s army was routed, and when Andromache sat up and pulled the spear out of her chest, she saw Quynh’s body and then she screamed. On and on and on.

And that’s when Quynh woke up for the first time, immortal.

Together they dragged themselves off the battlefield, fighting off the carrion crows with their arms. Quynh’s healing was slow, but she leaned on Andromache and they found an abandoned barn and made love all night. In the morning they set off west, back toward Scythia.

///

At first Andromache told herself she wanted to return to Scythia to show her lover her home, but the truth was, she was dreaming of her province, the hills and valleys and rivers, and a boy she thought at first had been her brother. Had she ever had a brother? She couldn’t remember.

The closer they got to the Caspian Sea, the more she dreamed of the boy. When she mentioned it to Quynh, the woman had been startled. 

“Wait, we’re having the same dreams now?”

“Tell me what you dreamed.”

Quynh described a tan young man with a round shield and a helmet that gripped his cheeks. Andromache had never seen him armed before and at first thought they were dreaming of two different men. “That sounds like Macedonia, not Scythia. Well, let’s keep heading west, and we will just have to see.”

“I don’t understand. Why--?”

Andromache slid her hands through Quynh’s lovely lustrous black hair. “I saw you,” she said quietly. “For weeks. That’s why I originally came east. To see if my dreams were… real. And then General Mulan sent you and me to the Mongols, and I discovered that some dreams can come true…”

Quynh laughed. “And to think it took me a week to realize you were a woman!”

Andromache sighed. “Don’t feel too bad. I thought I preferred men for about two thousand years.”

///

The siege of Damascus had lasted seven months, and that had been bad, but he was a mercenary and bad was what he did, so he just fought and fought and managed not to die. But then Alexander had taken Tyre, and that was bloody and awful. He hated watching the slave-sellers with the women and children. Then they marched south, but Gaza was even worse. The Gazites had resisted fiercely, and he had gotten a spear in his side, which got infected and they had thought that he had died, but it had turned out to be just a coma—a sentence he never thought he would hear himself say. Today, when Jerusalem finally surrendered, he realized even the scar was gone. Strange, but siege. He had a little on his mind.

Alexander announced that he was going to take Egypt next, and Lykon feigned an illness and stayed with the satrap of Jerusalem. He had been dreaming of two foreign women now for weeks, since his wound disappeared. They felt like something he should pay attention to. His father had always told him to attend well to any dream he had more than once.

He was sitting in a tavern, drinking warm beer when the two walked in. Awake, he would have sworn they were men, warriors, but he recognized them immediately, and they ordered mulled wine, looked around at the clientele and immediately made their way over to his table.

///

At the bar, Andromache muttered, “Nailed it. Macedonian, right by the window. You owe me twenty denari.”

Quynh sighed melodramatically, handed money to the bartender and more money to her lover. “How do you want to handle this? He’s never going to believe—”

“He recognizes us. We just have to have a drink together, then we’ll figure out our next war. Go from there.”

They ambled over.

“May we join you, soldier?”

“Of course.”

He worked with them for nearly two thousand years (give or take a few decades). He went down in one of those city-state wars in what everyone would later call Italy, during what everyone would later call the Renaissance.

They had seen him wounded so many times by then and he’d hardly notice, but this time he just went down and didn’t get up again. They tried to close the ugly belly wound, stop the torrents of blood with their hands, but he just looked tired.

“It’s my time, girls. It’s just my time.” He always called them girls, even though Andromache was easily four thousand years old. It was a joke. It had been a joke. Now it was just a farewell.

He looked relieved it was finally over.

And that’s how they discovered that it could be finally over. 

Someday. 

Eventually. 

Between one moment and the next.


	2. From Moscow, Down the Frozen Volga

Ann wrapped herself in her highland shawl and watched her wife writing in her diary, mostly plain-hand about their journeys, but also crypt-hand about the local political strife, or money, or grubbling with her. Well, a lack of grubbling. They did so much by day, seeing the sights and meeting wealthy Russian aristocrats, that neither one of them had much energy for fun between the sheets at night.

The journey to Moscow had been colorful, yes, of course, but also at times interminable. Ann watched tiredly as her wife put away the large journal and turned to dress for dinner with a freshly laundered black cravat and freshly pressed black pelisse. For a moment, Ann considered skipping the dinner, pleading weariness, but she had noticed Anne’s eyes wandering over that princess the day before and thought she should accompany her, to keep her honest. Ann’s French was passable, but not as fluent as Anne’s was, and though she enjoyed these affairs a bit—the food was often fairly good—she tired quickly from not completely understanding the conversations.

///

11/3/39

There are a great many pretty girls here. One dame in particular is one of the finest women I ever saw, Venus de Moscova. The princess is a very agreeable, clever, stylish person. I wonder if we are seeing too much of each other. I find AW’s constant presence v. irksome.

///

The week after Christmas, temperatures went down to 26 degrees. At one dinner party they heard the story of a French couple who were abducted by the Cherkessians and were never seen again after no ransom was paid. Ann was ready to be done with their long travels, but Anne’s eyes still lit up whenever the men at the table told tales of their military travels south toward Persia. Women at the table tsked and recommended that Miss Walker and Miss Lister should not even be thinking about traveling south, saying they were absolutely insane if they tried attempting it in winter.

Ann just wanted to go home. She was tired and homesick and hesitant about the expense of further travel. They fought about it almost every other night. Count Panin had even floated the idea of Miss Walker staying in Moscow while Anne traveled south with a different companion, but Ann would rather die on the road than be left alone in the Russian capitol. Often their fights ended with them talking about separating when they got back home to England. The whole thing was rather a mess.

///

1/17/40

The road to Sergiyev Posad was clear. Opened and shut my window from time to time to peep out as well as for air. Very fine day and we were quite warm enough by dint of cloaks and being so covered in. How picturesque the monastery, with its 8 towers and high white walls. We attended a service and I had words with the abbot, a well-read man.

Returned to AW in the dumps, resorting to utter silence.

Obtained passes and provisions. Exchanged bills of credit for rubles. We both wrote letters, personal and business. Will be long before will do so again.

///

They arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on the ninth of February, thoroughly fed up with each other. Anne frequently left the window on her side of the carriage open, because it steamed when closed and the whole point of their journey was to see Russia, though the temperature was -18 degrees.

Ann was thrilled when they pulled up at an inn, since they would actually be able to sleep in their night things in a real bed again, not wrapped up in coats.

///

2/21/40

Followed the frozen Volga south. Impossible to write while we were going on account of occasional big jolts. Too cold, my fingers began to ache.

In Kazan, visited a mosque, then adjourned to the house of the Tatar honey-merchant Arsayeff, much respected and rich--4 wives. Except for an asylum for the insane I have never seen any sight so melancholy and so humiliating as this haram. How terrible the degradation of one half of mankind!

///

It took them a week to get to Saratov, but it was a good break, a lively town which kept them amused and briefly mended what had become a cold bleak feeling between them. They stared at the small dark people and the people stared back at them. Ann felt astonished, looking back on her life in Halifax, never having expected to get as far as Paris, much less hundreds of miles south of Moscow!

The letter from Anne’s professor friend allowed them to be received by Prince Cerbedjab, who threw a feast for the two Englishwomen complete with French wines followed by tea. It was a good break from their long, cold journey, and Ann did her best to enjoy it.


	3. Of Blood and Blades

Nicolo di Genova had known from the time he was three that he would be a priest and he had worked hard and prayed hard for ten years to purify himself. When he went to his bishop and begged to be trained, the old man had patted him on the head and sent him to the cathedral school to learn to read and write in Italian and Latin. He was a quick study.

He was ordained at twenty and spent five years traveling as the bishop’s bodyguard, because although he was studious and pious, he was also strong and dexterous and the youngest of six brothers, which meant he had had to learn how to protect himself from a very young age.

He was good at that too.

But going back and forth from Genoa to Rome, as his bishop was a close advisor to Pope Urban, had meant that he got to see the Vatican close up. Many things in life, his mother had always told him, didn’t bear close scrutiny. His father had almost always murmured, after his mother had left the room, “Women, business dealings, and the Church.”

At the time, he had paid little attention. In retrospect, he realized that his parents were very wise. But he had seen Urban close up many times, although of course the man had never deigned to speak to him. But he had seen him, had seen the practically visible flame of zealousness in the man’s eyes. So, when Urban had shouted to the crowd, “God wills it!”—

Well, Nicolo had renounced his vows right there, ditched his mace and picked up a sword and marched to the best sword master in town and begged on his knees for the man to teach him. He wasn’t alone.

The sword master, a lanky fellow named Piero, sized up the crowd begging him and set them two against two, and agreed to teach the top twenty. Thirteen months later, Nicolo was thinner, stronger, with ropy muscles and a mean backfist in support of his hard-won sword skills. When the princes called for soldiers, he and his sword-wielding brethren shouted, “Deus lo vult!”

He anticipated dying in Jerusalem and did not fear it. He hoped his death would cancel out his renunciation of his vows, that he could still be worthy of heaven. He was wrong about that, on a lot of levels.

He had no idea just how much his life would change.

///

Lykon woke abruptly, gasping for breath. Andromache, who never seemed to need much sleep, was drowsily tending their fire in the wilds of northern Egypt, with Quynh lightly snoring by her side, one arm thrown lazily across Andromache’s legs. Quynh gasped and sat up, shouting, “No!”

Andromache had not slept, but her instinct was to grab both of them, one hand each and ask, “What did you see?”

“A man, with a cross on his shield and his sword in the shape of a cross!” said Lykon. “He wears an iron shirt.”

“No, a dark man with a curved sword, more like ours, and clothes like ours but he wears a turban.”

Andromache looked from one to the other, then sighed. “Tend the fire. I will try to sleep, and if I dream any of what you dreamed… well, we will start a new search. I had wondered whether we would meet any more of us. It seems the constant war our world suffers creates eternal soldiers to fight it.”

She was out before she finished her sentence.

///

Yusuf’s father always wanted him to be a soldier, to be “the Prophet’s swordhand.” Trying to be an obedient son, he had followed his brother to sword-practice, followed his brother to school, to learn to read and write by copying passages of the Quran, to learn numbers so other merchants would never cheat them. And he was good at all of it, but he took a special liking to numbers, the way he could make them dance. His teachers argued with his father to let him study further, and until he reached manhood, his father let him. Then he joined his older brother, now a merchant, protecting the caravans and double checking his brother’s accounts, because his brother often read numbers backwards and lost money due to his inattention to detail. Yusuf was patient. He loved his big brother.

But then the heathen soldiers from Spain and Italy and France took Jerusalem, a prime trading city. And they had heard tales of the atrocities committed by the infidels in Istanbul and beyond, but this was beyond the pale. Yusuf and his brother argued loudly and long, and at the end of it, Yusuf took his sword and armor and joined the Fatimid relief army. Someone had to contain the infidels’ endless greed and cruelty. He, Yusuf Ibrahim Al-Kaysani, had to try to help.

///

Along the way, the old guard learned smatterings of Latin and Greek, and Quynh teased Andromache, calling her Andro. (Centuries later, before the end, Andromache would tease Quynh, calling her Queen after they learned English. Lykon just rolled his eyes.)

The passage to Jerusalem was horrific, and they all died a few times on the journey. But by the time they reached the home of the Hebrews, the city had achieved an unequal and inconsistent peace. Following Andromache’s practice of “following the booze,” they found their fellow immortals at an inn just outside the city. The moment they entered, Lykon had muttered, “Found ‘em. And I think… they’re a little like you ladies.”

They followed his gaze to a small table with two men, one beardless and infatuated, the other bearded and gruffly protective.

Andromache sighed. “You’re not wrong.”


	4. From Volgogrod to Tblisi

4/4/40

Obtained the service of two Cossacks as our armed escort, though I was forced to charge one of my pistols to convince the station master that we were determined to go on with or without one. He told us that the Cherkess further south were attacking military forces and insisted we wait until we heard better news. Spent my birthday resting and in awe of the Greater Caucacus. Magnificent snow-covered granite range!

///

The Cossacks left them when they reached Yekaterinogradskaya, continuing west on their own journey. The muddy town was depressing, and the citizens showed signs of stress. The postal courier who had joined them tried to sham illness, but Anne refused to return his passport to him. Their servants, George and Domna, looked afraid but trusted Anne to protect them.

At moments like this, Ann felt torn. On the one hand, she hated the danger and anxiety, hated that she was too weak to stand up to her wife. On the other hand, she was proud of Anne Lister, fierce lady traveler, who stood up to the men, even the local commander who didn’t want them to continue their journey and dug his heels in when Anne insisted on his finding them a private escort. But she was more bull-headed than any Russian officer. He got them four men on horseback, and they were back on the southern road the next morning.

///

4/6/40

We passed a quarantine station for those traveling north where, if they did not have a bill of health from the Governor, they would have to stay 14 days. A Russian officer traveling alone agreed to join our train—better for both of us. The next day, we ran into four Cossacks and I invited them to join us, and was shortly grateful I had, as our coachman suddenly shouted, “Tcherkess!” and stopped the carriage abruptly. The men prepared to fight. I got out and reprimed my one loaded pistol.

The Tcherkess, all well mounted, wheeled round (about 20) to the back of us and drew up on the rising ground behind us. I concluded they were preparing for a regular cavalry charge down upon us—their halt was to me a moment of anxiety. But the horsemen hesitated. I mentally counted our strength—4 Cossacks, 4 drivers, a Russian officer and his servant and drivers who had come along with us, a teleaga with a man or two, the courier and George and ourselves—18 all.

I thought we would make a tolerable fight. I felt not the least afraid, nor did Ann. After tense minutes, they rode off. The courier was visibly trembling, but I felt quite satisfied at our stand.

///

A few days later, when Anne had time to write in her journal, Ann was still of two minds about their travels, and for all of the same reasons. She was tired, but she had also seen how literally fearless her wife was, and that made her proud.

But then the road became steep and dangerous. The sledge over the frozen mountain, the Cossacks, the cold wind in their faces and then the narrow treacherous descent. Ann went on, because there was no other choice, no other direction, no other weather than that which assailed them. Yes, Ann went on, of course, she did, but she was shaking and in tears the whole time and the tears threatened to freeze on her face.

Finally, after an eternity, they arrived in a beautiful valley and said farewell to their escort. Ann found a place to sketch for the first time in months. Anne went for a walk by the rapid river to look at the mountains.

On the twelfth of April they arrived in Tblisi, nine weeks after leaving Moscow.


	5. Apres Moi, Le Deluge

One of the biggest problems Andromache saw with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the uneasy but unrelenting belief in what she called “supernatural woo-woo.” Even though they were all quite aware of their own daily participation in the woo-woo, they still fought it among themselves. Nicky and Joe firmly believed in God and Allah, and Andromache believed in her love for Quynh.

After they lost Lykon, they held on to their loves for dear life, because suddenly their immortal lives, undervalued before, had become dear. As the tide of religious hysteria moved across Europe, they fought to protect those innocents caught up in the madness of the persecution. After rescuing a group of women about to be burned as witches, Andy and Quynh found themselves hung by the neck for their “crimes.”

Death once again refused the two women. To those watching, it only confirmed what they suspected. Andromache and Quynh were clearly agents of the infernal.

If they would not die, the priest reasoned, a fitting imprisonment was required. The soldiers dragged Quynh out of the filthy, rodent-infested jail cell to imprison her in a spikeless iron maiden, sailed her off the coast of England and tossed her into the sea to drown, heal and wake, and drown again.

For eternity.

Or until the gods tired of their cruel joke.

Nicky and Joe rescued Andy. They searched desperately for Quynh, plagued by regret and guilt. They hunted down the men who had been on the ship, but memory was faulty and tides shifted. They searched decade after decade, until Nicky and Joe—having argued about this between themselves for years—declared that they had vowed, should something similar happen to them, that they would stop searching after a century, so that their immortality would not go to waste. Shocked, but convinced, Andy agreed.

But she was never the same again. She was never able to forgive herself for abandoning her first and only love.

///

Sebastien le Livre had been well named. He had been born into a family of book merchants, who had encouraged him to read widely on all topics, from Voltaire to mechanical engines. He had fallen in love with and married his school-years love, Marie, and they had had four children by the time Sebastien was 23. Then… came Louis XIV and his Austrian wife. Then came the Revolution, which he had hoped to avoid, being too busy with his printing press, printing money and tracts about liberté, egalité, etc.

Eh, bien, he thought. Tant pis pour moi.

It had made sense at the time, literally printing his own money. It just didn’t work. He was precise, but not precise enough to not get caught. And in France, one was guilty until one proved oneself innocent, which of course he couldn’t do, because he wasn’t. So they gave him a choice: execution, which was certain death, or service in Napoleon’s army, which was uncertain but likely death.

He chose the conservative option, which seemed completely reasonable until the siege of Moscow, where he almost starved, definitely froze his nuts off, decided to desert his unit, was captured and hung. 

But didn’t die.

By that time, Andy, Nicky and Joe had figured out the business with the dreams and found him before the French army could realize anything about his powers. And they were grateful to have him, as the Industrial Revolution spun them into a maelstrom of new mechanics, machines, technology. Sebastien’s intellect, education and curiosity made him a much-needed addition to the team. Better adapted to the rapid changes of the Industrial Revolution, he provided a new direction and greater anonymity as the team entered the industrial age as guns for hire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eh, bien, tant pis pour moi. = Oh well, too bad for me.


	6. From Tblisi to the Point of No Return

The rooms in their inn were damp, with six windows badly glazed and blowing wind in six directions. The food there was bad, so Ann improvised with soup, eggs and rice on their spirit cooker. The first week was cold and damp. Ann was physically and mentally exhausted. Although living with Ann for seven and a half years had built up her stamina to an extent, that could not stand against months of dreary unrelenting travel in the bitter cold.

Even Anne was too tired to write in her journal, and that was saying something. She wrote a letter to her friend, the princess in Moscow, announcing their arrival, and she dug out the letter of recommendation from Countess Panina to the wife of the Russian governor general, and the woman took care of them, sending them meals and showing around the town in her coach.

They visited the busy bazaar next to the bridge across the Mtkvari and the old castle on the hill. Anne wrote a letter to her old friend Mariana. They attended a ball given by the commander. They charmed the local aristocrats, who invited them to come to their summer homes, but Anne wanted to push on to Baghdad. Everyone said such a journey was impossible, but Ann knew well that the word was not in Anne Lister’s dictionary. She had literally crossed it out in ink. 

Ann accused Anne of being selfish and they had an almighty row, but when Ann pointed out how much over their original budget they had gone, Anne had to give in. They wrote to their banker in Moscow and asked him to send them emergency funds from Hamberg.

Still, they were so close to the Black Sea. Domna, being pregnant was allowed to stay, while they took the rest of their team, four mounted Cossacks, four Tartars, and an officer as their escort, since there was still unrest in the region.

Ann would later regret not standing her ground. She would regret the whole damn trip. She would regret ever meeting Anne, falling for her, marrying her in secret. She would regret everything. But Anne was beginning to go grey and she admitted to Ann that after this, she doubted she would ever travel again. So Ann had relented.

But her wife had not been wrong.


	7. I Have Seen Those Gilded Onion Domes

On February 5, 1840, Queen Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert, in the Chapel Royal of St. James Palace in London. In the back of the chapel, staying as unobtrusive as possible, stood the people the queen knew only as Andrew, Nicholas, Joseph and Sebastien. They had saved the prince from an assassination attempt and the queen had given them a generous reward, which they had immediately invested in trains, which Sebastien had insisted was the next big thing. In almost thirty years, his instinct about what he called new technologies had never steered them wrong (although Andy had invested a bit in gold and art to hedge her bets).

The next night, they were back in Hay-on-Wye, with Sebastien hunting down an unappreciated first edition of some French philosophy book that he swore would pay for their room and board for weeks. He wasn’t wrong.

That night, they shared a room at the Lion’s Shield, and they dreamed strange dreams.

A person in a black military style jacket, hurrying down a road, walking very quickly. 

Cossacks on horses.

A church with huge colorful onion domes.

A blonde woman in a light blue dress with ridiculous sleeves. She seemed unhappy.

The Volga River, solid with ice.

They woke up gasping. Joe grabbed his sketch book and drew what he had seen and what they described.

“But it’s so soon,” moaned Andromache.

“Not even thirty years,” said Nicky.

“That’s Moscow,” said Sebastien.

“I know,” said Andromache tiredly. “I too have seen those domes before. But really? Moscow in February?”

Joe shrugged. “It’s not as if the cold can kill us.”

Sebastien shook his head. “Maybe not, but it can make us bloody uncomfortable before it fails.”

Andromache rubbed her eyes. “We’ll need coin and banknotes. Provisions. Transportation. Letters so we can connect with the authorities in different towns along the way. Warm clothes. Weapons.”

Joe looked skeptical. “Um, boss. Women? Really? I mean you and… um Quynh, sure. You were both warriors. Those two looked like the only thing they could kill was a cup of tea.”

“You’ve known me for what, Joe? Seven centuries? All women are warriors. We have to be to survive. And I got a feeling of… I don’t know… intelligence? We need whoever they are. But they are moving fast, so we need to move fast too. Let’s get what we need and get going.”


	8. Of Blood and Bugs

One of the beautiful things about their immortality was their ability to just keep moving, despite the temperature, despite running out of their carefully rationed, well, rations, despite the warlords and their battle plans. Andromache and the medievalists, as Sebastien called them, bankrolled the operation, and spent the extra money to get fresh horses as often as they could and keep moving.

They arrived in Moscow with a packet of letters of introduction from their wide variety of well-connected friends, and quickly got themselves invited to dinners and balls, which they all attended wearing suits that were not in the most current fashion. Andromache had cut her hair after they rescued her from the witchfinders, since as a man she was less likely to draw that kind of attention.

At these formal functions, they listened disingenuously to the opinions of the aristocrats who had tried to advise the two, rather odd, Englishwomen not to try to get to Persia practically on their own. Sebastien posed as a writer seeking stories of lady travelers for a magazine in Paris. One woman offered to draw the women’s intended journey on the map of Russia he carried folded in his pocket. They went back to their rooms and made their plans from there.

///

By changing horses as often as they could, they made good time on their way south, following the frozen Volga, and the warmer the days grew, the more they dreamed of the two women and the Cossack soldiers who escorted them. In one dream they watched a group of soldiers on horses threaten to sweep down on them in a cavalry charge. The woman in the dark clothes primed a pistol and stepped out of the carriage boldly joining her escort.

They woke amazed.

Sebastien said, “You were right, boss. I think I wouldn’t want to mess with her.”

“Still not convinced about the other one,” said Nicky.

Joe shook his head. “But why are we dreaming of them if they aren’t dead yet?”

Andromache shrugged. “Maybe it depends on the people? Quinn had not yet died when I first dreamed of her.”

“Women,” snorted Sebastien. “Fortuna is a woman, no?”

Andromache smacked him on the back of the head. The boys laughed.

“What did you see, boss?” asked Joe.

“The Black Sea. Looks like I’m bringing you fellows home to meet my old geography.” She spoke lightly, but there was a sadness in her voice. She had brought Quynh home, once.

After that, they made even better time, since Andromache knew the area. In their dreams, the woman in the dark clothes climbed a glacier with some mountaineers, looking smugly satisfied to see the land from that height. They watched as she made the other woman comfortable places to sleep and give her the best portions of their food. It was clear they were lovers, and Sebastien was shocked. Sure, everyone knew that men did such things, but women?

Nicky and Joe exchanged looks. But Quynh had been thrown into the sea sixty-two years before they found Sebastien, and he had never seen her together with Andromache. Quietly, Joe took Sebastien aside and explained a few things. They still had thirty-two years to look for Quynh before they would have to give up, and they were taking time away from that pursuit to retrieve these women. Sebastien promised to keep his mouth shut after that.

///

They reached Tblisi on August 11, and in their dreams, they saw the brunette fall ill and the blonde tend her tearfully. They saw the manservant do his best to help, carrying water from a nearby well, finding them food. A regiment had passed through the city just prior to their arrival, so there were no fresh horses to be had. They took rooms in a small, rundown hotel that had a stable in better shape and took the opportunity to rest the horses and themselves and refresh their provisions. Three weeks later, they headed west-north-west for Kutaisi.

As they rode, they saw more signs of unrest, groups of soldiers on the road, headed south looking healthy and battle-ready, and other groups of soldiers heading north looking ill and battle-weary. They did their best to avoid drawing attention. Two weeks later, they arrived in Kutaisi. It took them the better part of the day to find an inn that wasn’t either full of sick travelers or ruinously expensive. 

Andromache found a tavern where the Cossacks drank and made friends by speaking their language. They told tales of the English ladies with wide eyes, and Andromache learned that the women were named Anne Lister and Ann Walker. According to them, Miss Walker was “just a woman, a city aristocrat,” but Miss Lister was… something else. The women had argued about their itinerary, and Miss Lister had been adamant about the opportunity to see the Black Sea. The town of Zugdidi had been mentioned. 

The Cossack sighed deeply. “I do hope they did not go there. They’ve had an outbreak of the hot fever there, I heard yesterday. I think that Miss Walker would not survive it. She seemed delicate.”

Andromache paid for their vodka, thanked him for his help, and went back to meet the men. As she told them, “I know that area of old. It’s swampy, a bad place for bugs and disease. And it’s going to take us at least three days of riding to get there. Get some sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”


	9. Fade Away

By May, the weather had warmed considerably, so instead of being miserable and freezing, Ann was miserable and sweating. In Baku, they encountered another harem, that of the Persian jeweler, Hadji Baba. His wives fed the Englishwomen tea, sweetmeats and pistachios and danced a Georgian dance for their amusement.

They visited the ruins of a palace and an oil and gas field, and saw the eternal flame at a Zoroastrian temple, fueled by the gas. After spending an enjoyable week with their hosts, they went on their way. Anne had wanted to view Mount Ararat, but none of the military men would agree to escort them, so they returned to Tblisi, where the banknotes from Moscow had finally arrived. After arguing about money, again, they gathered their servants, and a Cossack officer and headed west. The valley was lush and beautiful, and Ann took the opportunity to sketch the narrow river, the beeches and aspens, and the honeysuckle on the side of the road.

At the end of June, they reached Kutaisi, the second largest city in Georgia, where they stayed with a Cossack commandant and his family. They saw the ruined Bagrati Cathedral and two monasteries. Then they continued their travels, asking for accommodation from the local administrators. Sometimes they had a room to themselves, and at least once they moved on because the house was full of people ill with the hot fever.

///

7/21/40

Reached the source of the Rioni after fighting through the underbrush. Left Ann sketching and, with two of the men, climbed up to the top of the glacier by 7:55. Paid the men two silver roubles. Good honest mountaineers. I would go all the Caucasus over with them. Back at the bottom, having no maid I had to wash my clothes myself. First time in my life.

///

Ann fared well in the mountains, waking early to walk or ride, taking the four-hour midday siesta with more good will than her impatient wife, and sketching in the afternoon. Ever the gentleman, Anne always gave her the better place to sleep and the best of their meals. Gradually they got along like they had in previous years. After almost four weeks, they went on to Zugdidi, but along the way they encountered many people who were pale and ill. The locale was hot and muggy, and they got lost. Their men left them to find the way back, but when they returned in September, Anne Lister had died of a fever, six weeks after her last journal entry on 11 August 1840.

Ann Walker closed her wife’s eyes, herself long past tears, and let the townsmen take the body off to be embalmed. Then she gathered their things and made plans with her escorts to make the long, dreary voyage back to Moscow and from there back to England.

Anne had been right, Ann thought dully. She would never travel again.


	10. Hard to End

The first night on the road, Sebastien dreamed of his son dying of the cancerous growth, his hair greying while Sebastien’s retained its color. He recalled the harsh words about Sebastien’s lack of love and mercy, when Sebastien knew he would have given everything he had, life included, to save the man who had been a little boy in his arms only a few decades before, a boy whose favorite toy had been a little wooden duck on wheels, that he led around the house with a string.

Joe dreamed of his mother dying of the flux. He remembered at the end, practically having to carry her to the outhouse, and no matter how much water she drank to combat the constant watery shitting, she got thinner and paler and basically disappeared. He was grateful that the world had learned a thing or two about disease since then, but he knew it was not enough.

Andromache dreamed of a night maybe four thousand years before, or three? When she had taken Quynh to see the Black Sea and they had stripped naked and floated on its dark, waveless surface talking under the bright stars about their hopes and dreams.

Nicky dreamed of Anne Lister calling out to her knight to save her, and he sat up suddenly gasping for breath.

They all woke, attuned to each other after so long together and he described how the woman no longer recognized the people around her. He described the shack some locals had leant them, the trees and flowers around it, the well a hundred yards away. It wasn’t much to go on, but as soon as the sun rose and they ate some bread and cheese and cold sausages, they split up into pairs and rode into Zugdidi from the east and west sides, determined to conduct a search grid, determined to be there when Anne Lister died.

Determined to be there when the being dead… stopped.

///

Ann Walker was exhausted. It had been almost six weeks, and her wife had lost weight, didn’t even recognize her. Her skin had been warm on and off the whole time, but tonight it was hot to the touch.

Ann recalled wearily the last time she had touched Anne’s skin… in other ways, back when they had been hiking by day and making love in their tent at night. And though Anne did always record in her journal exactly how long it took her to get Ann to climax, well, that was just Anne, and if she really minded such a thing, she would never have married her.

Those had been sweet days, some of the few best weeks they had had in years. Then it had been over, and they had been fighting again. And now…

Ann was fragile, delicate. People used to call her an invalid before she met Anne. But coming to know and love the remarkable Anne Lister had enabled her to discover that she was stronger than people around her assumed. She was stronger than even she had known herself to be all those years ago. At any moment, she thought she might break, even now.

But she forced herself to face what was quite likely coming. If she lost Anne, she would be alone in a very strange land with a little money and few friends to get the thousands of miles back home, and somehow get Anne’s body back home too. It had to be faced.

Leaving Anne for a moment, Ann went out to where their manservant George was mending his extra shirt. 

“George,” she said wearily in French. “We have to talk.”

///

Maksym Voloshyn’s family had been embalmers for generations, and he had seen some very grisly things over the years, and some very strange things. When the Frenchman had come to him, asking him to collect an Englishwoman who had just passed away from the hot fever, he sighed deeply and went with him.

The other Englishwoman who had been traveling with her looked like family members almost always did when it came like this after weeks. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes glazed, and she seemed to have trouble understanding, or even hearing, what he was saying. So he caught the Frenchman’s eye and, still directing his comments to her in slow French, he could tell that the servant was remembering everything so he could tell her when she was in a better place to hear it. Then he had his sons load the dead woman on their cart and went back to his workshop. This had to be done exactly right if she was going to cross borders. He would have to do it himself.

So when they got her on his slab, and his sons went off to do their errands, he put on his apron, saying a prayer for the dead. Then he started to unbutton the many fussy little buttons on the aristocrat’s dress.

Then she sat up gasping.

Huh, he thought. Coma. Sometimes, it happens like that.

///

Nicky and Joe saw the sign above the man’s shop and thought, well, if they couldn’t find the woman before she died, at least they could plant themselves in a place she would likely end up afterward. Joe stayed with the horses. Nicky entered the shop, just in time to hear a woman’s loud gasp.

He knocked on the door to the back room. The aproned man who opened the door did not look shocked, but just said, “Yes?”

“Um, the doctor wondered if the lady might—”

“Ah, you are here for the British woman?”

“That’s right.”

The man snorted. “They should have waited for the doctor. Without an ear trumpet or one of those new stethoscopes, it can be very easy to mistake low heartrate for death. Happens more than you’d think. You’ll want to take her home and give the good news to her little friend.”

“Yes,” said Nicky carefully. “I’ll do just that.”

///

Joe and Nicky escorted Miss Lister back to their agreed-on meeting point outside of town. They sat on the ground together eating bread and cheese and drinking from a flask of water, passing it back and forth. She was ravenous, and still shaking. Her color had returned. She looked more like the woman who had climbed the glacier and less like the corpse she had recently been.

She was quiet the whole time, thinking intensely, it was clear. Finally, she asked, “That man, what he said about a coma, that’s not right, is it?”

“In general,” said Joe, “yes. In your case, no.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It is not so understandable,” said Joe. He sighed, stood up and bowed. “I am Yusuf Al-Kaysani. I fought in the Fatimid relief regiment during what you would call the First Crusade. I died then. I’ve died a lot since. You can call me Joe, if you like.” He sat down.

Nicky stood up and also bowed.

Miss Lister said, “You are the knight. I saw you, on the walls of Jerusalem.”

“Yes.”

“A Mohomedan killed you.”

“Yes. Joe here. Quite a few times, actually.” He shrugged. “I’m over it.”

“Surely this is impossible?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely,” said Joe.

“Nicolo di Genova, at your service. You can call me Nicky.”

The woman stared into the trees, watching birds hop from branch to branch, chattering. It was the end of the day, feeding time for them. She said slowly, “I’m going to need some time to think this through.”

///

Andromache recognized the well and Sebastien found the shack, with the blonde woman and her servant talking woodenly. They caught the word “embalmer” in French and just walked past and kept going.

When they were out of earshot, Sebastien said, “I thought it was both of them.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think I ever dreamt of the little one when they weren’t together. We’ll see tonight, if we dream of her or not.”

“How are we going to get the other to agree to leave this one in the wilds of Russia?”

Andromache shook her head, checked the position of the sun. “Let’s go back to the meeting point.”


	11. Old Soldiers Never Die

Andromache rode her horse more slowly than Sebastien was used to. In the three decades since his first death, he had been the most risk-tolerant of them all, which made sense, since he was the youngest and he had not seen any of them die (or, as in Quynh’s case, be consigned to a semi-eternal torture). He suspected she was realizing that they weren’t going to be retrieving both women, only the tough one. That was going to be hard for the boys as well.

When they reached the knoll where Nicky and Joe had set up camp, he realized that they had already retrieved Miss Lister. She sat with her back against a tree, looking dazed. He knew the feeling. It was only twenty-eight years ago for him. He dismounted, took off his horse’s saddle, rubbed her down and tied her with the other horses. Then he went and sat by the Englishwoman.

“Mademoiselle Lister. ‘Ello. My name is Sebastien Le Livre.”

She turned her head and looked at him with dark eyes. “Really. And how did you die?”

“Hung for deserting Napoleon’s army outside of Moscow.”

She grunted. 

He ventured, “Your friend, she is making plans to take your body back to England.”

She stared at him. “Ann… Dear God, this will break her!”

“That one does not break, I am thinking. She seems très pragmatique.”

Anne stood up. “Look, I appreciate you trying to help me, but I’ve got to get back, explain the mistake.”

Joe said, “Can you explain why you are suddenly completely healthy?”

Nicky went and put his hands on her shoulders. “She will not understand. And you… you are singular. She is not like you, like us.”

Andromache, having finished tending to her horse, walked over. “You have dreamed of us, Miss Lister, just as we have dreamed of you.”

“No, well, yes, I dreamed of three men—” She waved loosely at the boys. “And two women. Where are they then?”

The men tensed.

Andromache pushed her hand through her short brown hair. “In your dream, were we being hanged? By your people?”

Anne opened her mouth and shut it again. Sebastien thought she was the sort who was rarely speechless.

Andromache smiled sadly. “When you are wanted for witchcraft, a sudden sex change is sometimes necessary. When you come with us, you also might want to consider trousers and a… different hairstyle.”

“But I’m not going with you. I need to get Ann and the servants back home!”

Andromache turned to Sebastien. “Care to shorten this particular conversation, ‘Bas?”

Anne turned to look at him, confused. He pulled his pistol and shot her in the head. She dropped like a stone, blood everywhere.

Andromache said, “If she’s been dreaming of Quynh, she is still alive. We have to get back to the search!”

On the ground there was a groan.

Joe said, “We will, of course we will, Boss. But we need to finish this retrieval first.”

Nicky knelt next to Anne’s body, watching her twitch and blink. After a minute, she sat up, wiped her forehead with her hand and looked surprised at the wet blood that came away. A few seconds later a bullet fell into her palm. She looked up at Sebastien. “You SHOT me!”

“Oui, Mademoiselle. Pardonne moi.”

Andromache sat down next to Anne and said quietly, “You are now, technically, functionally immortal. You can die but it will probably be centuries, maybe a millennium or more before you do. So, the big question is, how are you going to use that time?”

Anne looked pensive. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was learn. And have a woman love me and spend her evening hour with me.”

Sebastien knew what Andromache expected of him, the criminal, the professional bastard. Sighing he said, “And how’s that last part going for you? You two fight a lot, especially about you using her money.”

“What?”

“I mean we were all very impressed by you climbing that glacier, and facing down that cavalry with your one-shot pistol, but is she enough for you? Is your life—courting a bunch of aristocrats who don’t understand how large you are inside your heart—is that enough for you?”

She stared at him, her heart in her eyes. 

He said, more softly, “You could be an immortal warrior. You could be legendary.”

“You saw us fighting?”

“Yes,” said Nicky.

“And me climbing—”

“Yes,” said Joe.

“And…doing other… things…?”

Andromache swiped her hand through her hair, “Yeah, but not doing anything I haven’t done myself.” She wiggled her eyebrows, before suddenly seeming sad and looking away.

Anne stood up unsteadily. She was a few inches shorter than Andromache, who was tall for a woman, taller than Sebastien.

“What… who… are you?”

“I’m Andromache the Scythian. Some people call me—well, the story version of me—the Eternal Warrior.” She smiled tiredly. “But you can call me Andy.”

///

Anne Lister agreed to stay with them for the night and make her decision in the morning. But she had never slept much over the years, and by the time midnight came around (well, 12:11 by her pocket watch under the light of the moon), she was restless and needed to see Ann.

She rolled out of the blankets the men had kindly layered for her and stood. She wasn’t very good at directions even by day, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t abandon Ann. There was a full moon. It would have to be good enough. She stepped away from the banked fire.

“Need an escort to go visit your… wife?” Andromache’s voice was smooth and calm.

“I can find her myself.”

“Doubt it. I’ll go with you. I know this country like the back of my hand.”

“Russia?”

“Scythia. Didn’t you realize? Caspian Sea? Black Sea? This land is the southwestern border of what used to be my empire.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah, when you stop dying permanently, they tend to put you in charge of things.”

“Hm.”

They walked slowly down the path to the town.

“You’re not trying to stop me.”

“Wouldn’t help. You’d still try to go.”

“Yes. I would.”

“At some point, you should talk to Sebastien about why it’s such a bad idea to let family in on your secret. Doesn’t go well.”

“It worked for you, apparently.”

“That was five? Six? Thousand years ago. People were less skeptical back then.”

“You can’t possibly be that old.”

“See? Modern era. Skeptical.”

“Well, if we have the capacity God gave us to use our brains to build cathedrals and write poetry and make art, then why on Earth shouldn’t we follow scientific principles?”

“Hm. You like Shakespeare?”

“I’m an Englishwoman. Of course I like Shakespeare.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Anne Lister.”

“But this…”

“Is about as impossible, I’d say from long experience, as a sapphic woman finding another sapphic woman to agree to marry her in the nineteenth century since your Christ.”

“It wasn’t impossible. It was just…”

“Bloody difficult? Statistically unlikely?”

Anne sighed. “It took me forty-two years.”

“And you died at, what? Fifty?”

“Forty-nine.” She tripped over a root and swore. “But I’m not dead.”

“Not at the moment. But you have been. Twice today. You think your wife is going to understand that? Do you think she’s going to want to grow old while you don’t? That your neighbors won’t figure out that there is something unnatural about you?”

“Hm. Unnatural. God made me…”

“Sapphic.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And now immortal. For a given value of the term.”

“Well, but—”

“How are you going to explain that to the little woman with the ridiculous sleeves? Who weeps from fear because of bad terrain and horrible weather?”

“But she—”

“She handled the cavalry incident well, I’ll give you that. But I think that was because you were there with her.”

“And I need to be with her on the way home.”

Andromache stopped and put her hand on Anne’s arm. “Miss Lister. If you want that, it can be arranged. We can be a shadow escort, protect them until they reach your home. I am heading back to England anyway. But she can’t learn of your new… situation. You cannot contact her. If people back at your home find out about you, they will hang you for a witch, nineteenth century or not. And if she finds out about you and tells them and they don’t see you? They will stick her in an insane asylum. Is that what you want?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Distance, Miss Lister. That’s the only way you can protect her. Ask Sebastien. He learned the hard way.”

Anne rubbed her forehead, tried to brush the crusted blood off. “We can protect her on the way back?”

“Yes.”

“Trousers, you say. And… short hair.”

“It’s worked for me for several decades now.”

“It’s just… I. Well.” She sighed gustily. “I just wish…”

“We all had wishes, way back when.”

Andy rubbed her back. In the moonlight, tears streaked Anne’s cheeks, but she turned around and headed back the way they had come. As they arrived back in the camp, the boys were awake and getting ready to go look for them.

Anne straightened her shoulders. “I will join you. You must teach me everything you know. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I just. You must teach me everything you know.”


	12. Epilogue

It took Ann Walker a few days to make the travel arrangements. In that time, the Old Guard kept busy. Sebastien visited the embalmer and greased his palm so that he agreed to sell an appropriate casket, weighted with rocks, to Ann Walker’s manservant. It was not unheard of (though only spoken of in whispers) for men in his profession to aid a man who needed to start a new life. Just because the man in this case was a woman, well, that made no difference. They paid him in silver coin. He could assuage his conscience very well if it meant he would be able to feed his family during hard times.

And these days, they were all hard times.

Andromache rounded up a few Cossacks in the area and happened to mention an Englishwoman who had fallen on hard times who was trying to get to Moscow and might need an escort, and as an anonymous friend, she was trying to help her.

Nicky and Joe had put it out that they were looking for a job as travel escorts, and Ann Walker had immediately hired them. Andromache had tasked them with keeping an eye on the Cossacks as well as general protection.

During the night, Andromache and Booker often woke to hear Anne Lister crying, and they both pretended not to hear it.

The night before Ann’s entourage was to leave, Anne had second thoughts and had argued about going back to her wife. They all knew it was far too late for that; the coffin had already been delivered. But Sebastien quietly told his story, the story of his beloved, anguished dying son. The story of Sebastien’s failure.

And Anne had once been very much in love, and was still honorable, and still cared for her wife, and still worried about her well-being. But she was also eminently rational.

When Ann Walker left the town, she left under good protection, both some that she knew about and some she did not.

///

Before they left the city of Kutaisi, Anne had visited a book seller and bought a new blank journal, pens and ink, and a small travel desk. Andromache had bought her a horse and tack, and two changes of men’s clothes. Sebastien had rounded up provisions and ammunitions for their few guns. The trip north at least had the advantage of being more gentle, weather-wise, and they got to Moscow without incident.

In Moscow, Ann arranged for Anne’s coffin to be sent to England, and her own return journey, though long, was less of a burden for not bringing the dead body of her wife with her.

So Ann Walker returned to Shibden Hall near Halifax, the home of Anne Lister of old, but she was never the same after that year, that loss, the ultimate betrayal of all those who love.

Mortality.

///

High on the hill overlooking Shibden Hall, Anne Lister stood, hair in her eyes, top hat in her hand, her face awash with grief.

Behind her, the boys waited. On her left stood Andromache, the Eternal Warrior, the Scythian unaccountably alive in April 1841. She rested a hand on Anne’s shoulder. “Do you need a moment?”

Anne sighed. She had pictured this moment every night for six months. “No. I need either another four decades or I need to go do something… worth doing.”

“I have an idea about that…” murmured Andromache.

“I know. They told me. Your wife. In the sea. Are you familiar with tidal charts?”

Andromache frowned. “Um, no?”

“They are a newfangled idea, but they might help you. I was talking about this with Monsieur Le Livre. He thinks it is worth a try.” She clicked her pocket watch open and looked at it, then clicked it closed. “Time to start a new life, I suppose.”

Andromache stared. Joe and Nicky had been sanguine about their new, strange life mainly because through it, they had found each other. This woman had lost everything, was leaving everything she cared about behind. And she wasn’t your average nineteenth-century in the Year of Our Lord woman; she was an educated, aristocratic woman, choosing to step into the life that Andromache the Eternal Warrior and her warrior brothers had shared for decades, for centuries. Shouldn’t she be a little bit more… well, miffed?

“What are we waiting for?” asked Anne. “We have a woman to locate. Ann is strong. She will get by, God willing. Didn’t you say we had a job to do?”

And sure, it had been six months of traveling, watching Ann Walker manage the day to day, manage her anxiety, manage her grief, her servants, her soldier escorts… But still.

Andromache said, “By the way, I didn’t want to say anything on the road, but you look pretty good in the trousers and waistcoat. But I still think you should cut your hair. Long hair for a man is pretty old-fashioned. You’ll draw attention.”

Anne sighed, feeling her low ponytail. “Fine. When we pass through Halifax you can invest in some shears. And maybe another pistol. And some maps.”

“Fair enough.”

“I speak French, Italian, Latin and Greek. I’m rubbish with German and Russian. They put me to sleep. How many languages do you speak?”

“Me? Forty-six. But my Arabic is, as you say, rubbish, at least according to Joe. Why?”

“It seems obvious to me that the major benefit of immortality is time to learn things. I am better at languages than I am at close-quarter combat, so let’s start where I am strong, and gradually add the things that I am weaker at.”

Très pragmatique indeed, thought Andromache. She nodded, dazed.

“Excellent,” said Anne. “Monsieur Le Livre thought we should start our search near Plymouth. That was always the hotspot for witchfinders and puritans. If we don’t find her body there, then we might consider traveling to the Americas. I have a theory that she was discovered, freed, feigned conversion, and traveled to the New World to start again.”

Andromache stared, “But… but why?”

“Look at me. Why did I start again?”

“You are not what you were. You…”

“I am not. But after decades of possibly drowning and being reborn and drowning again… It is highly likely that she is not what she was either.”

“And she is going to blame me for not finding her.”

“Quite likely.”

“Miss Lister. Anne. This isn’t your fight. Why would you…?”

“I woke up on an embalmer’s slab in Kutaisi, five thousand miles from home. None of you knew me, yet you came four thousand something miles to retrieve me. It only seems… right… that I help you…”

Andromache rubbed her eyes. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been alive?” she asked wearily. “Do you have any idea of what fuckery I’ve seen humans perpetrate on each other? That I have perpetrated on other humans?”

“I did read Gibbons, and The Life of Charlemagne. My father was in the American colonies during their rebellion. I have at least a small idea.”

“Humans are shit. We’re shit. I’m shit.”

“Hm. Perhaps. But in my limited experience, farmers use shit every day as fertilizer to nourish the plants we grow for food. Shit isn’t pleasant, of course not.” She sighed and gave Andromache a small smile. “But it is quite useful.”

Andy stared.

Anne raised one eyebrow, smirking slightly.

Andy said, “Well, if that is how you feel about it… welcome aboard.”

And they grinned at each other, neither entirely happy but, for now, both entirely satisfied with their situation.

Finis


End file.
